Robot truckers could replace 500,000 US jobs

A file photo of a self-driving truck. The driver shortage is so bad that American trucking companies are trying to import drivers to ease what has become one of the most acute bottlenecks of the supply chain crisis. — AFP/Aurora Technologies Inc

The robots will take the most tedious, most dangerous jobs first, in most things. Trucking is no exception.

Autonomous driving engineers are squarely focused on long-haul freight, the interstate runs with almost no complexity save for a slow curve or an E-ZPass lane. As such, those routes are some of the simpler challenges on the self-driving spectrum.